A widowed California woman returned to the demolished site of her Pacific Palisades home amid the L.A. wildfires to search for any remaining items that might have survived the blaze that left her building leveled.
In a TikTok video posted to Good Morning America’s account, ABC News’ Matt Gutman interviews Gale, a widow who fled the scene of her burning condo building wearing nothing but her nursing scrubs and carrying her phone.
In the video, Gale, wearing a makeshift face covering and gloves, digs through the rubble of the incinerated structure, unearthing the scorched remains of a safe in which she hopes she will find some of the valuables she had to leave behind.
“We wanted to get to it before the looters got to it,” Gale says, standing atop a pile of debris as a man dislodges the safe from the ground with the shovel beside her. Looting has happened since the fires destroyed multiple neighborhoods of L.A., with at least 20 people arrested this week for allegedly committing the crime.
Gale says she left behind all of her important documents and her passport as she fled. Using an axe, the man in the video helps Gale open the melted door of the safe, removing contorted metal boxes.
Inside one of the boxes, Gale’s wedding rings are among other valuables and jewelry, shining as if they were almost brand new.
Almost as soon as the pair pry the lid off the safe, police — on high alert for looters in the area — emerge to investigate the group.
In the video, Gutman can be heard asking one of the officers, “How major of a concern is looting here?”
“Oh, it’s huge,” one of the officers responds. “And then you have million-dollar homes, all intact, rows and rows of them, and there’s really no way to police this area effectively right now.”
The L.A. County Sheriff announced that measures were being taken to combat looting and increase security, including bringing in National Guard troops on Friday to provide protection and working to establish a curfew near the impacted fire areas by Friday evening.
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